Progress
Cambridge , MA 1/15/00 .......
This Saturday we hosted a double-dual (men and women) meet vs Southern Connecticut State University. Traditionally, Southern brings some very clean gymnastics, and this year was no exception. Southern won the meet 175.25 to MIT's 165.925. For our squad, it was a 6 point improvement from the week before. The improvement was due in part to the return of junior Sonja Ellefson to the line-up. Although Sonja has only had 1 day of practice and didn't get through the meet without a few falls, she was able to contribute to the team score.
The meet began with both teams on vault as one of the four judges was a bit late to the meet. Southern vaulted first as a team and was ahead right from the start with a 44.375 team total to MIT's 41.95 which was a mere .5 better than last weekend with Sonja (9.05) replacing injured Deb Dryer in the line-up and junior Liz Ellingson vaulting for the first time this year (8.15). The biggest increase came from bars, where first year students Lindsey Wolf (7.3) and Carrie Garceau (8.0) improved their respective scores by .45 and 1.05 over last weekend's performance. The addition of Sonja's 8.825 helped to a bar team score of 39.775 as compared to a 35.40 from the week before. Southern's routines had more difficulty and they padded their lead with a 43.00 team performance on this event.
Beam was still a bit rocky for most of the team, but Liz Ellingson (8.6), sophomore Amy Shui (8.45) and first year Tanya Burka (7.55) managed to stay on the apparatus with some wobbles. The team was showing the strains of a long week of practice but managed to perform well on floor for a team 43.80 total. As expected, many of the routines are still not quite as sharp as they can be and there is still room for improvement.
Overall, the first year competitors managed to settle down a bit and enjoy the meet more than the week before. The entire team is looking forward to our upcoming trip to Bermuda where we will be competing in a tri-meet vs Cornell and Universtity of Alaska on Thursday 1/20 and in the six team Bermuda Triangle Challenge (with Nebraska, NC State and Brown additionally) on Friday night.